


with all that i am

by Anonymous



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29520849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Nakia offered him a smile in the here and now. “You’re up late,” she observed quietly.(Archive 2018)
Relationships: Nakia (Black Panther)/T'Challa
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Anonymous Fics





	with all that i am

**Author's Note:**

> Old bit of introspective fluff I'm reposting here for archival purposes.

She rounded the cool white curve of the wall and saw him in the dark, silhouetted by the lingering blue glow of several hibernating monitors.

His head was bent to something on the table in front of him, fingers skimming its surface. Nakia hesitated, caught by his profile, his bent head and the angle of his shoulder, soft in the shadows. His mouth, turned downward and tense.

She took a step forward and T’Challa shifted, angling slightly toward her. Not as if she’d startled him, but as if he recalled himself into the moment and remembered to respond to a presence he’d identified some time ago. She would, Nakia thought with amused chagrin, have to adjust back to his acute senses picking up on even her trained footfall. She had gotten used to being able to sneak up on whoever she pleased.

And he turned toward her now fully. “Nakia,” he said softly.

She’d almost managed to forget this, in the time that they were apart and her life was very busy with grimmer things. The power of the way he said her name: the terribly gentle way it lingered on his tongue.

When she’d seen him again in the suit, she’d weathered it. He was beautiful as the Black Panther, a sleek and purposeful force of nature, but in a way that was more easily stripped into formality. Into king and spy. When he’d removed the mask--when she’d seen the tightness around his eyes, the way he set his mouth as if braced for pain to strike him at any moment, with any memory--

She’d recognized the loss in every inch of him and she’d wanted so badly to step right back across that boundary they had very wisely set. To reach out to him, to...but she couldn’t. Not then and there, anyway, in the trees with frightened eyes on them, her plans scattered to the wind. She wasn’t sure what either of them would do if they touched each other, but she knew it wouldn’t be prudent.

Nakia offered him a smile in the here and now. “You’re up late,” she observed quietly.

T’Challa moved his hand slightly, brushing it off with a flick of his fingers. “I’ve been restless.”

Nakia stepped closer to him, watching the velvet darkness of his pupils dilate just a little, even further than the dark room had prompted. Quietly, to him alone, she admitted, “me too.”

He searched her face with his gaze. It was tripping them up, she thought, not that there was so great a distance between them but that it had always been dangerously easy for them to slip into small intimacies, and they were too used to guarding against them.

Nakia reached for his hand.

She touched his arm first, above his wrist, soft fabric folding under her fingers. She felt the warmth of his skin, muted through cloth. The strength of bone and tendon, and finally her fingers slipped down over his wrist and found his palm, his fingers gently curled and so still: waiting for her.

Nakia turned her hand to touch him, to fill his palm, and his breath caught so quietly she almost missed it--would have missed it, if not for her humming awareness in this quiet moment of every shift and nuance of his body.

“I am so glad,” she said quietly, “so glad that you’re all right.”

T’Challa breathed in deeply and let it out. “And I,” he said. “That you escaped--that you saved Shuri, saved my mother--” He turned his hand, caught hers, and raised it to his chest. His throat worked and he looked at her. His heart, beating under her hand.

She took a step closer. “Like I said,” she offered, quirking her lips in a smile meant to brush it off. _Duty._ How much could she talk about this, really? How could she find words for how it felt to see him fall, hear the water splash against Killmonger’s calves as he took that stabilizing step, the weight having left his shoulders? There were no words. No words that didn’t flay her too raw for Shuri’s lab, for both the weariness they both felt.

T’Challa shook his head a little and she drew in a breath, ready to fend it off adamantly, to repeat _duty_ \--her heart speeding a little simply remembering that moment at the water’s edge--but he just squeezed her hand. The words died.

“When I opened my eyes,” he said softly, “and I saw you…”

Nakia closed her mouth. Searched his face with her eyes. Her heart was in her throat. Maybe they would talk more openly about this when the wounds healed. When time had passed and stepping into his arms didn’t feel like something she had to check herself from doing. When she didn’t still want to taste his pulse for reassurance every other second that she looked at him, press her ear to his chest, clutch him and say _do not do that again. Ever._ As if they weren’t both fighting this battle. For now, it was enough that the moment had passed, that they were both alive and well and Wakanda was safe….or as safe as they could make her at this moment in this world.

He covered her hand with both of his now, pressing her loosely curled fingers against his heart. “I was grateful,” he finished simply. A smile curved her lips, small and helpless.

“So,” she said, leaving so, so much unsaid, “was I.”

He chuckled and his voice was a little rough in his throat. “You should get some rest,” he said, blinking away a hazy gleam of liquid. He squeezed her hand lightly again, pressing it to his sternum, and Nakia took a step forward.

“So should you,” she said. “Or at least come upstairs.” She didn’t glance at the table, refusing to lead his eyes. Whatever he was looking at (in truth her quick spy’s gaze had catalogued it already, comprehending in an instant the gold claws of the suit Killmonger had chosen) it could wait until morning.

T’Challa almost argued. She could tell. But at the last second he met her eyes again and she reached up to touch his cheek, examining the sleepless shadows and lines of strain on his face. And he relented.

“Walk with me?” he said again with a flicker of a rueful smile. She stepped close and let her left hand fall from his cheek to his chest, where he held her right hand close with both of his. She offered him a small smile and his head bent to her, the dip of his neck graceful, the smell of him filling her lungs. Their breath mingled.

“Of course,” she said, but she wasn’t thinking about the steps or the night air or any of the sumptuous rooms available to her. The words were a formality, and she watched his lips curve at the calm certainty of her voice.

Nakia touched his face again, fingers slipping along his warm skin. T’Challa turned his head and kissed the inside of her wrist with devastating tenderness, kissed that thin and fragile skin where her pulse fluttered wildly now. His beard brushed her; his lips, full and tender, pursed against her and exhaled warmth.

Nakia took a breath, stepped forward and interrupted that kiss with one of her own. And he caught her as she rose up, her hand flying to his shoulder to support herself. His hand rested at the small of her back, then cradling her skull, warm at the back of her neck. He tilted his head to meet her kiss, his breath catching again. This time she felt that hitch against her body like a caress.

The warmth of him, here in the soft dark as he held her. She breathed in and her body arched against him, following simple instinct and desire. She felt her breasts brush his chest with an aching acuteness, felt his fingers spread against her spine. Her lips parted and Nakia felt the heat and softness of their kiss melt into something more urgent as the tip of her tongue touched his lower lip and sent a frisson of electricity through them both.

She cupped his face with both hands now, thumbs brushing his cheeks, and she wanted--desperately--to follow her instincts and melt against his body, thigh to hip to belly to breast. Wanted to let them hold on to each other tighter and tighter until they were entwined until morning.

It was painful to make herself let go. Foregoing the touch of his skin felt like foregoing breath. But she did--drew back a little, biting into her lower lip as his eyes blinked dazedly open, long fringe of dark lashes veiling his eyes and sweeping up. She kept herself from darting in for one last kiss, but she couldn’t make herself pull very far away. She stayed, fingers curling against his skin and the stubble rebelling at the edges of his neatly trimmed beard. Drinking him in.

“We both need to rest,” she said.

He shivered against her, closing his eyes and composing himself, and she wanted--

Gods. She just _wanted_ , she couldn’t let herself put anything into words or she would lose all her resolve.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she added a little unsteadily. They let their hands slide away from each other almost simultaneously, stepping decorously back. She had rumpled the fall of his clothing, she saw, with even the brief clutch of her hands. The front of her body felt cold, and she controlled her shiver. He hesitated, then touched her elbow. His warm and calloused grip curved against her skin. “Walk with me?” he said once more, his tone not quite light enough to conceal the huskiness of his voice.

She answered him with only a smile. It was enough.


End file.
